Rooting for spring

It is still a little too early to start even the earliest seed for our gardens, but there is something I can do right now that will add to my display in my flowerbeds. The quiet days of winter give us plenty of time to take root cuttings from geraniums that I rescued before frost claimed them. I potted them up in fall, and they’ve been doing fine on the windowsill. They even seem to have started growing a bit now that the days have started to lengthen. Many folks like to root their cuttings in water, then transplant them into soil. The roots that a plant grows in water are very different than those that form in soil. It’s quicker and more reliable to root directly into soil.

This looks like a nice, healthy shoot.

It should make a nice cutting to root.

To root geraniums, simply take small (or large, if you wish) cuttings and strip off some of the lower leaves. Now you need to leave them alone for a half hour or longer.

Here’s the cutting stripped of its lower leaves and ready to scab over.

This will allow the juicy cut you’ve made to ‘scab over’. The reason we do this is to minimize the chances that the cuttings will rot. If you stick the cutting into the soil with a fresh juicy cut, dirt will enter and the chance for a rotted stem is much greater.

Here’s a look at the fine hairs on the geranium’s stem.
These hairs will turn into roots when the stem is buried.

Here are the cuttings drying out and scabbing over for an hour or so.
Below are the leaves I stripped from them.

Once the cut has dried, dip the stem into some rooting powder. Rooting powder is fine talcum with a rooting stimulant added to hasten the transition of those stem hairs into moisture and nutrient absorbing roots.

Dip the cutting into rooting powder.

Then slip the cutting into sterile potting soil. As you see, I’m rooting a group in a single pack. After they’ve rooted I can move them to pots or even wait and plant them in the flowerbed in late May. After you have your cuttings all planted, water them in lightly.

Since the house is dry in winter, I need a way to keep some humid air around the cuttings so they don’t dry out while rooting. Keeping the soil soggy wet won’t help and will actually cause the stem to rot long before it has a chance to form some little roots. I want the soil just lightly moist but the air around the leaves humid. An easy way to do this is to place the container inside a plastic bag. The bag doesn’t want to be sealed up since the leaves need to breathe. Misting inside the bag should be all the moisture the cuttings need until they have roots growing.

Bagged up and ready to grow!
On the left is a coleus grown from a cutting taken from one of last summer’s outdoor planters.

Place the cuttings and their little ‘humidity bag’ in a spot that is warm and bright but without any direct sun. Inside the plastic bag, the temperature would get high enough to kill the cuttings if it were placed in direct sun for too long. In three weeks or so when the cuttings have grown roots, they can be removed from the humidity bag and placed in a sunny window. A very light feeding (1/4 strength) will also stimulate growth. Don’t feed too much or too often while the plants are young…save that for when they are out in the garden in summer. Thanks for the read.